Paradox
by FloatingPizza
Summary: A collection of Terminator shorts, drabbles, and sketches, mainly focused on character exploration, currently focusing on the character of Marcus Wright. Willing to take requests!
1. Paradox

Dedicated to **ArmedWithAPen, **to aid in her search for Terminator-fic, and in appreciation for her own story composed in the second-person, which partially inspired this one. Many thanks!

* * *

The machine has made you a paradox.

Your senses are sharp, sharper than they used to be, in your life before, when you drowned them in a fog of alcohol after the weight of guilt settled in your chest. They've been liberated by the machine and fine-tuned by this future world's devil of a computer since, but they've become muted, somehow.

You feel the heaviness in your joints, like lead in your bones, as if there's always some inertia to be overcome, with every movement.

You can feel it in the deepest reaches of your mind, in the murky, wordless tangles of synapses that spoke directly to your blood and your nerves and knew them more intimately than the breath knows the lungs, the part of you that cries havoc over this great divide.

You feel the desert wind, the rain, the quick nips of the sand bullets and the sudden cold embrace of a weeping cloud, it's true, but the sensations are slow in the coming, dull, as if all the rawness and life had been sifted out of them.

You hear the gritty hisses of the night breezes and the roar of the flood assaulting the ground, but there's a subtle artificiality to the sounds that you hate, that foaming white noise at the edge of hearing.

You smell the ionized scent of the water rising off of the baking dust, but you always catch a whiff of metal, with every breath, no matter where you are.

It's like there's a veil between you and the rest of the world, a filter. That was one of the reasons you thought this was a nightmare at first, purgatory.

... you're still not sure it isn't purgatory, of a sort. Penance.

Lord knows you deserve it.

* * *

So this is what you've come to be. The uncertain, guilt-haunted soul of a dead man, shielded in iron and clothed in a lying skin, stronger than you'd ever dreamed, more isolated than you'd ever fathomed. Half invulnerable.

Like you said. Paradox.


	2. Rooster

Lord knows why, but somewhere on that dark road up to Skynet, up to the dragon's keep, you mind starts playing that song, reeling back the notes like a damaged, skipping record player.

_Here come the rooster,  
You know he ain't gonna die_

You're half out of your mind with fear, of the future, of the past, of yourself, so you latch onto those chords like a drowning man. You let the music thrum richly through your mind, hear it free of distortion in your memory, see your brother's fingertips brushing at guitar strings, and look to some distant afternoon decades ago instead of the rubble-strewn sand in front of you. You start at the top, piece the words back together, work your way down through the long, rich instrumental.

_Ain't found a way to kill me yet  
Eyes burn with stinging sweat_

That's a start.  
Some part of you smiles grimly at that first line, at the irony, but the sentiment doesn't make it onto your face. It's too damn honest for that.

_Seems every path leads me to nowhere  
The bullets scream to me from somewhere_

Bullets screaming. You can relate to that.  
You step over a long, ugly rut in the land and hear your knee joint whine and hiss, and the sound makes your spine grow cold and something in your chest freeze up, so you cast your attention back to the music. You dive back into that music, for your sanity.  
Bullets screaming, guitar. And then- chorus.

_Yeah they come to snuff the rooster  
Yeah here come the rooster, yeah  
You know he ain't gonna die  
No, no, no, you know he ain't gonna die_

Your memory starts blaring out the lyrics in a rush, like you could cling to humanity through sound, through the voice of a far-gone singer echoing in your metal skull, through distant music that came to you in happenstance, sailing across arid wastes.

_Walkin' tall machine gun man  
They spit on me in my home land_

You remember waking up in alienation. Waking up in chains, like a monster. Your bones felt heavy, your eyes felt heavy, Lord, your _skin _felt heavy, like it was waiting to fall away, leaves in autumn, and leave you bare, and cold, and inhuman.

_My buddy's breathin' his dyin' breath  
Oh God please won't you help me make it through_

You can see the keep ahead, lit up in cold florescence. You can see the castle, the ramparts, the machines…

_Yeah they come to snuff the rooster- You know he ain't gonna die_

You've made it this far in one piece, so to speak. Half your face is gone and you can hear your bones clicking and spinning, but you're still breathing and your heart is rattling the metallic bars of your ribcage like some imprisoned idealist.  
There's a scout of some kind just ahead of you, on a barricade, sweeping coldly and ruthlessly. You won't get past it.  
Almost of its own accord, your hand reaches up and you trace the expanse of your cheekbone, false and intricate and metal.  
Marcus Wright won't get past that thing.  
The machine will.  
You take a shuddering breath through your teeth and clench your fists. This is all or nothing. You've played all or nothing before, you've rolled the dice and lost, ended up with two dead cops on your conscience and your life to pay, and pay you did.  
Something tells you, though, that the circumstances are different this time around. Whether it's something in your spirit or the cold confidence of the machine, or something even higher than that, you don't know, but it's sure enough and strong enough to trust, even though the music's ended and the fear's rushing back inside you.  
So you breathe again and pray, fiercely, like only the condemned are able- though you've always been condemned, so you know no different- and twist, turn, step out into the line of fire and lock eyes with the dragon, glare into its unholy light.

_No, no, you know he ain't gonna die._

* * *

_Song used as template: "Rooster" by Alice in Chains, aka the song from the Jeep scene. I think. It's "Rooster" or a Pink Floyd song, can't remember which. _


	3. Flight

You used to dream on wings of airplanes, before the ceiling of the world came crashing down.

You used to dream of flying, in an offhand, childish way, dreamt of becoming a pilot and soaring off somewhere better. It was a good escape and it sustained you, but you never got further than the sky above the clouds, you could never think of a destination, only the flight itself, the escape. That was before reality came screaming in and knocked your dreams into a tailspin they never recovered from, before they crash-landed on a road strewn with broken bottles and lit with glaring blue lights.

That was decades ago, a lifetime ago, but the raw hopelessness is still a bitter well-recalled taste in your mouth, and this burnt-out shell of a world isn't helping much, either. The sky is empty of airplanes and empty of hope.

Empty except for warplanes, that is...

* * *

You woke up soaking wet in the shallows of a clear-flowing river, your sides bruised but not hurting half as much as they should have. You laid there a long time, waiting for the pain to start up, for your cracked bones to begin their certain protest, but they never did, so you held your breath and stood up and again waited to buckle over from an assault (there was no way you could have fell that far and not paid for it), but miraculously there was nothing, no pain aside from the dull slow ache of bruises.

You raised your hand and scratched the back of your neck in uncertainty, then squinted up at the sky and muttered something to yourself about Providence. You set off walking soon after that, following the path of the transport, because you didn't want to be alone with your thoughts, not here.

After however so many long dragging steps (you didn't bother to count them and that was intentional) you came upon an infinite stretch of pylons arcing over the land like the fossilized backbone of yesterday. They were black, scorched-looking, barren of the salient hum of electricity.

There was an odd billowing mass caught on one of the pylons, fabric and cords, and after you took a few cautious steps closer you could tell it was a parachute, and you recalled the A-10s streaking past the transport, glaring silver in the sun. _The pilot must have bailed._

The thought of coming upon another human being didn't exactly fill you with joy, given the state of the world, but you decided hell with it, come what may, you weren't gonna leave anyone out here burning alone under the desert sun. You jumped onto the pylon and placed your hand on the next rung, about to climb up, when the pilot tossed off her helmet and your heart, your oh-so-steady impervious heart, gasped and fell and skipped a beat.

You were shocked by her sudden beauty, the elegant oriental strength of her features, because loveliness was the last thing you expected to see in this hell of a wasteland, especially loveliness of her caliber. You took a second look at her parachute, her circumstance, and felt shocked all over again, because the pilot was this beautiful woman whose appearance was stabbing you in the heart, not some grizzled vet twice your age cursing the sun.

An image of the A-10 blistering through the sky like a comet shot through your mind and a feeling came flaming up through your chest. The feeling had shades of patriotism and hope and it burned like love, and it rocketed through your heart like a bullet, then was gone, just as quickly.

You blinked and looked back up at the pilot, through her river of silken black hair, and let out a breath you didn't know you were holding.

You shook your head, just slightly, and started climbing up the pylon.

Providence. Just maybe.

* * *

**Author's Note: **The sky being empty of airplanes is a little nod to _Warm Bodies, _which is another excellent movie, in case you haven't seen it.


End file.
